School is a dream for Syrian refugee family struggling in Lebanon

An extended family of Syrian refugees lives in an underground garage and collects refuse from the streets of Lebanon in order to survive; only two of the 13 children under the age of 11 attend school.

BEIRUT, April 7 (UNHCR) – Thirteen-year-old Abdul Wahad lives in an underground garage in Beirut amid the stench of garbage. Garbage is his business. "When I grow up," he says, "I want to go to school."

Abdul Wahad is one of the 1 million Syrian refugees now registered with UNHCR in Lebanon. The number is astonishing in a country of fewer than 5 million people. In Britain it would be as if almost 15 million destitute people arrived in the span of three years.

HIs extended family of 25 live in the garage, where Mercedes Benz cars were once serviced, by choice. Despite the humidity and the occasionally seeping sewage from ceiling pipes, the family refused another dwelling UNHCR found for them. They collect garbage to make money, and the garage has space to store the bottles, cans and plastic they scavenge until the recycling firm picks it up every 10 days.

The men and boys of the family are on the streets every day to collect debris, often working until 3 a.m. The next morning the women separate the cans from the plastic bottles and stuff them in large hemp sacks. The garbage takes up half the dank subterranean shelter.

UNHCR has helped Abdul Wahad's family with wood, tarpaulins and blankets to build and furnish the five makeshift shelters in the garage, along with coupons for food. But rent, heat and electricity costs US$1,000 a month. All of them have to work. Of the 13 children under 17, only two go to school, and they then help with the sorting.

In Lebanon there are no formal refugee camps for Syrians. Seventy percent of the refugees rent rooms or flats, but accommodation is so scarce that the other 30 percent live in makeshift tents and shelters, abandoned factories, half-completed buildings, empty garages and with Lebanese families.

On average, UNHCR registers another 2,500 Syrian refugees each day. In some towns, like Chebaa or Arsal near the border with Syria, Syrians now outnumber the Lebanese.

Half the refugees are children, but most don't go to school. The Lebanese school system has created "second shifts" in the afternoon to try to accommodate the influx of Syrian children, but that only takes care of 100,000.

Back in the garage in Beirut, Abdul Wahad's grandmother, Muna, is drinking coffee in the gloom at 9:15 in the morning. She is the matriarch of the extended family in the garage – three sons, four daughters, and their children – some of whom are still sleeping.

Abdul Wahad is up, singing and trying out dance steps. A couple of the boys are kicking a half-deflated football near the bags of garbage. A girl is dragging a cloth dog on a string. The ball and the toy, like all the chairs and tables, were found in the search for garbage.

The family became refugees in early 2013, after fleeing fighting in Homs and struggling for weeks to find refuge elsewhere in Syria. "We had land and our houses were all around it. Everything is destroyed, everything is stolen. Everything. We have a well. They even stole the generator and the pump. We have nothing," says Muna.

Like so many refugees, Muna experienced violent death in the family. She talks stoically of her oldest son. He was living in Lebanon but went back to help the family. Instead he was kidnapped. His wife searched for four months before she learned he was dead.

"My son died for nothing," says Muna. "He hadn't been involved at all. He so much wanted a son, he had four girls and finally a son. But he never had the privilege of seeing him grow up." Still, she intends to take her family back to Syria when the killing stops.

As she talks, her mobile phone rings. Her daughter Ftaim is calling from Syria. She has gone back repeatedly to look for her husband, missing for months. Again there is no news. As she speaks with her daughter, Muna picks up her grandson Hamsin and holds the phone to the three-year-old's ear so he can hear his mother.

"My husband and I are old," she says. She's 58. "Now we only think of the children. Our relatives – my husband's relatives – are scattered all over, some in Turkey, some in Jordan, some still in Syria. I don't even know who is living and who is dead."

They think only of the children, but the children must work instead of going to school. She shrugs; what can they do?

Abdul Wahad joins the conversation. "After I go to school, I want to work with computers," he says. But for the foreseeable future he will work only with garbage.

2008 Nansen Refugee Award

The UN refugee agency has named the British coordinator of a UN-run mine clearance programme in southern Lebanon and his civilian staff, including almost 1,000 Lebanese mine clearers, as the winners of the 2008 Nansen Refugee Award.

Christopher Clark, a former officer with the British armed forces, became manager of the UN Mine Action Coordination Centre-South Lebanon (UNMACC-SL) n 2003. His teams have detected and destroyed tons of unexploded ordnance (UXO) and tens of thousands of mines. This includes almost 145,000 submunitions (bomblets from cluster-bombs) found in southern Lebanon since the five-week war of mid-2006.

Their work helped enable the return home of almost 1 million Lebanese uprooted by the conflict. But there has been a cost – 13 mine clearers have been killed, while a further 38 have suffered cluster-bomb injuries since 2006. Southern Lebanon is once more thriving with life and industry, while the process of reconstruction continues apace thanks, in large part, to the work of the 2008 Nansen Award winners.

2008 Nansen Refugee Award

Lebanese Returnees Receive Aid

UNHCR started distributing emergency relief aid in devastated southern Lebanese villages in the second half of August. Items such as tents, plastic sheeting and blankets are being distributed to the most vulnerable. UNHCR supplies are being taken from stockpiles in Beirut, Sidon and Tyre and continue to arrive in Lebanon by air, sea and road.

Although 90 percent of the displaced returned within days of the August 14 ceasefire, many Lebanese have been unable to move back into their homes and have been staying with family or in shelters, while a few thousand have remained in Syria.

Since the crisis began in mid-July, UNHCR has moved 1,553 tons of supplies into Syria and Lebanon for the victims of the fighting. That has included nearly 15,000 tents, 154,510 blankets, 53,633 mattresses and 13,474 kitchen sets. The refugee agency has imported five trucks and 15 more are en route.

Posted on 29 August 2006

Lebanese Returnees Receive Aid

UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie returned to the Syrian capital Damascus on 2 October, 2009 to meet Iraqi refugees two years after her last visit. The award-winning American actress, accompanied by her partner Brad Pitt, took the opportunity to urge the international community not to forget the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees who remain in exile despite a relative improvement in the security situation in their homeland. Jolie said most Iraqi refugees cannot return to Iraq in view of the severe trauma they experienced there, the uncertainty linked to the coming Iraqi elections, the security issues and the lack of basic services. They will need continued support from the international community, she said. The Goodwill Ambassador visited the homes of two vulnerable Iraqi families in the Jaramana district of southern Damascus. She was particularly moved during a meeting with a woman from a religious minority who told Jolie how she was physically abused and her son tortured after being abducted earlier this year in Iraq and held for days. They decided to flee to Syria, which has been a generous host to refugees.

Saving Diana: A Syrian Refugee With Special Needs

Ten year old Diana was born in Syria with a severe form of Cerebral Palsy. For nearly a month, she traveled with her mother and brother across deserts and sea in search of safety in Europe.

To Turkey from Kobani, Syria: Ivra's Story

As Syrian refugee numbers surpass 4 million, many families and bright young people in camps across the region wonder about their future prospects. Ivra is 13 years old, she had a great life back home in Kobani, Syria. She was a top student who loved sports and reading English literature. One day the conflict reached her school and home and changed her life forever. The fluent English speaker is now one of many refugees who fled to Turkey. She lives in the country's biggest refugee camp.

Cate Blanchett gets to know Ahmad for World Refugee Day 2015

The actor and UNHCR supporter met a group of young Syrian refugees acting in a drama at a community centre in Lebanon. Among them was Ahmad, who was celebrating his 14th birthday.